Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce has risked opening a new rift with Liberal cabinet colleagues by telling an anti coal seam gas group he will fight against the CSG industry's plans for the food-producing Liverpool Plains.

Fairfax Media has learnt Mr Joyce wrote a letter to NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell on Christmas Eve on behalf of the Mullaley Gas & Pipeline Accord, a member of the Lock the Gate Alliance, fighting plans by miner Santos to tap fertile cropping country south of Gunnedah.

The letter asks the premier to consider Mullaley group's request that the Liverpool Plains be ''off limits to any CSG infrastructure''.

Advertisement

Santos holds two lucrative petroleum exploration licences over the Liverpool Plains and plans to drill into a giant coal-seam ''fairway'' after it develops the less-productive Pilliga forest near Narrabri.

Any push to quarantine an entire farming area from CSG would be a direct challenge to the Liberal Party and the powerful mining lobby.

Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane said in September he wanted to see ''every molecule'' of gas extracted. He has established a taskforce to find a way to cut through red tape and protests to get CSG production happening in the state.

Mr Joyce's office confirmed he wrote to Mr O'Farrell but said he did so in his capacity as local member for New England, which incorporates Liverpool Plains. A spokesman said the minister ''wasn't expressing his personal views''.

But David Quince, chairman of the Mullaley Accord and a Gunnedah Shire councillor said Mr Joyce told him and four other members at a December 19 meeting in Tamworth that CSG would be both ''catastrophic'' and ''disastrous'' if allowed to develop in the Liverpool Plains to the scale it has in rural Queensland.

Mr Quince told Fairfax he was ''disappointed'' the minister appeared to be moderating the position he took in private. ''He said he was prepared to stand up for the Liverpool Plains,'' he said.

Mr Joyce's spokesman said he would not comment on discussions in a private meeting but his public stance on CSG had not changed: CSG wells are only acceptable if they are kept off prime agricultural land, do not harm water courses and provide a financial return for the farmer and the community.

The Mullaley group was angered that areas of the Hunter around horse studs and wineries were included in the NSW government's recent exclusion zones but food-producing land such as theirs can still be exploited.

A spokesman for Santos said the company had proved in Queensland over 15 years that CSG can be developed safely and responsibly to the benefit of farming communities.

''NSW needs to develop its gas if it is to maintain a secure supply of energy for its businesses and households,'' he said.

A spokesman for the Australian Petroleum Production & Exploration Association said: "The protest group asking for NSW petroleum licences to be revoked clearly care little for the state's reputation as a place to invest, and even less about the State's economic interest or its energy security,'' he said.